Vista revisted

For the love of monkeys!!

OK, the bottom line is that I still like a lot of things that Vista brings to the table, despite the issues associated with getting it all to work. That said, what the hell was Microsoft thinking when they thought it was a good idea to release the OS at this time? Trust me when I say that I am a huge supporter of moving forward and leaving the legacy behind. I applauded Apple when they drew a sand in the line and said from THIS point forward, OS9.x and previous will no longer be supported, either in hardware or software. What this did was make the customers of Apple make a hard choice: live with the existing hardware and software and features as is or upgrade to take advantage of new hardware, software and features the customer deems important enough to make the investment.

Microsoft, AMD and Intel are beholden to the big businesses that have huge investments in legacay equipment and software. With all due respect to these people...T S!!!! Look, when cars come out with specific tire requirements, we simply adhere to what the manufacturers suggest. When DVDs with component video came out, we upgraded out TVs to take advantage of the features and resolution the better connection offered. When they changed the formula for Coke... ooops, okay, bad example. You get the drift though. Only in IT do the customers really dictate the flow of things. And yes, this is how it should be to some extent. However, it severely stifles progress and ends up costing us all.

I totally agree if there is no reason for so-called progress (i.e. a USB keyboard operates no quicker than a PS2 keyboard) then I can understand a certain reluctance. Though, my chosen example is more for the convenience of connecting all the similar cables to a common point and to clean up the back panel of the motherboard. In the case of a modem, the inherent technology will never need a faster interface (i.e. PCIe) on the motherboard so manufacturers are not going to upgrade the connector on the device. As such, new motherboards requiring a modem connected will typically still have a PCI slot. It took a very long time for ISA slots to disappear completely; it will take a long time for PCI to disappear completely. I need at least two slots for my two Hauppauge MCE500 dual tuners as they have yet to make PCIe versions of the cards.

OK, back to Vista specifically. Vista tries to be all things to all people when it really should have drawn a line in the sand and ensured everything on the forward side of the line worked as advertised. Hardware manufacturers should have had proper drivers in place for the hardware they deemed necessary to work with Vista. Software vendors should have had updates and patches necessary to work the versions of software they deemed necessary to work with Vista. And standards should have been in place both in the OS and with the hardware to ensure compatibility.

Now on that last point is where I want to concentrate today. USB 2.0 and the various APCI power management standards have been in place for years. So, why is it that people are having trouble installing or even rebooting Vista when certain USB devices are plugged in? And why are droves of us, myself included, plagued by a ridiculous bug in the OS that does not allow a machine to resume after going to sleep or hibernating? I was ready to rip out my motherboard (a very nice Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 unit that includes built in Intel GMA3000 video) and take it back to Canada Computers because it was constantly freezing and not coming out of sleep and then on reboot, not posting. This is some fo the same behaviour that the previous motherboard I had in (an Asus P4C800E Deluxe with a P4 3.0GHz CPU) was exhibiting which, incidentally, prompted the change in the first place. I thought to myself, the Antec P160 case that these motherboards sat in could not possible be at issue. Nor could the power supply be suspect as I was sure to buy one that had lots of headroom (an OCZ 700W GameXstream) to power the many drives the PVR held. So, if the hardware is cherry, then the OS must not be.

I did some digging around in Google and read a LOT of forums and websites in order to arrive at my conclusion; they all basically pointed to the same issue. I went into the power settings and modified it to the Performance setting so that it shut off the monitor but it does NOT put the whole system into sleep. This works well for my system as it is rarely not doing something so not going to sleep wasn't a big deal. Since that change, the PVR has not hung once, has not missed taping a program (what it was built for) and sings along merrily. I stress tested the setup the other day and was simply amazed at what a dual core CPU offers. I was able to watch a TV show live, stream video across the network to the Xbox360, run video from YouTube with several other tabs open on Firefox, have a few other windows open AND run an encoding operation from a DVD to the hard drive. ALL at the same time and without a single blip, stutter or issue in anything running. Simply amazing.

But that is due to the hardware, not the operating system. I simply hate recommending this buggy OS because when you cough up your hard cash for either a system with it pre-installed or you upgrade your own setup by dishing out for an upgrade, you expect more than the issues you have to contend with. There have been a number of hotfixes and other updates but nothing has been released to contend with the sleep issue. For you laptop owners, that simply means Vista is not the OS for you. If the machine going to sleep to conserve energy (battery or AC) is not a big loss, then I still recommend VIsta.

Just VERY cautiously. I think one needs to do more diligence on this OS than any previous and look for issues concerning any and all of your installed hardware. It will make your transition that much less frustrating. I will continue for now with Vista Ultimate and will continue to report any yeas or nays as they show up. My next exercise is to try to get the DVRMS toolbox installed in order to automatically convert the stupid proprietary format of Microsoft's into normal MPEG2 files while also removing the commercials at the same time. This exercise absolutely choked the poor P4 as it tried to convert files while taping new ones and just could not keep up. Core 2 Duo sweetness should make this a simple exercise.

Ciao.